Truth or Lies – Review

The past couple of times I’ve browsed through the game departments of Best Buy and Target, I’ve noticed a plethora of copies of Truth or Lies, and to my surprise Target had a pile of them on clearance for five dollars. I decided to take a shot in the dark with the game and pick it up after seeing if a friend would be interested in playing it as well. Truth or Lies was developed by Australian based Big Ant Studios, known for some Rugby and World of Outlaws games as well as a few ports. Truth or Lies is a party game that asks players questions that they then must answer truthfully to score the most points possible. A microphone is required to play the game but one was not packed in.

Truth or Lies asks players questions and the object is answer each question truthfully. The object is to ultimately win, after all this is a video game, and answering questions truthfully will net you more points. But what if an embarrassing question comes up? Then one would lie, but do so convincingly enough to trick the game.

Before my friend and I began, we each created a profile for the game. The game gave us a few questions and asked us to answer them truthfully or dishonestly, presumably to hear what we sound like in each scenario. Once our profiles were set up we jumped into the game proper. We picked a two person match and the game then asked how long the match should be; seeking the largest amount of achievements possible, we chose the longest match and it then asked us who was playing, kids, adults, etc.

All the necessary information is easy to understand, except each players score, which is revealed after each round.

Okay, now we were into the match. The questions we were asked were dumb. Even after selecting questions for adults, a lot of the questions seemed naïve. And most of the questions seemed uninspired, I mean on the front of the box one of the example questions asked what you would do if you had twenty-four hours to live? How would the game really know if someone was telling the truth anyways, it only gives you ten seconds to answer, and even then, my friend and I could’ve just horsed around when we were setting up our profiles? That said, we didn’t horse around when we set up our profiles and the game seemed to be fairly accurate when judging whether we were truthful or not.

The match we played was very long, about a half hour, and ultimately very boring. The format was similar throughout, all I remember is a lot of dull questions. Neither of us had any interest to play more of the game afterwards. We did check out the Hot Seat mode where we got to take turns asking each other questions, and that was pretty cool, but not enough to make us want to play more.

Truth or Lies boasts that it has over three thousand questions, thought-provoking ones no less, but the majority of the ones I saw were either naïve or just uninspired. After a match, I’d seen all of Truth or Lies that I needed to see. That’s not to say I didn’t have fun with the game, no, but the fun I garnered from the experience came from the dumb answers my friend and I gave, which became more absurd as the match continued. I would not recommend Truth or Lies.

Bonus: Check out the video tab on the Truth or Lies website (hyperlink) and watch some of the worst promotional videos for a video game ever. It seems like they were going for a sitcom vibe but they gave me serious wahjah.